One Hundred Years of Solitude

Colonel Orellano Buendia remembers a childhood memory of discovering ice with his father in the village of Wakanda. The village was small, with adobe houses by a clear river. The world was new and many things didn't have names yet. Every March, gypsies would come to the village and introduce new inventions, starting with the magnet. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Orellano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time, Wakanda was a village of 20 adobe houses built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names and in order to indicate them, it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March, a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village and with the great uproar of pipes and kettle drums, they would display new inventions. First, they brought the magnet.